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Editorial Advisory Board: Health care reform

Posted:
03/27/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

This week’s question: This week, President Barack Obama signed a health care reform bill into law. Many Democrats hailed the bill. Many Republicans vowed to fight what they call a too-costly and restrictive mandate. Some states’ attorneys general are suing to make their states exempt from the law. What do you think?

Can the Republican Party’s Audacity of “Nope” strategy succeed? At what point will the American people, a vast majority of whom — including myself — would prefer bipartisan cooperation, hold the Republican Party accountable for adopting their just say “no” tactical approach? As the Republican Party drifts further to the right, inexorably drawn in that direction by the most vocal elements in their base, will Republican moderates survive the Party’s primary culling process? If they don’t, can the hard-right winners prevail over Democrats in November?

The Democrats have primary litmus tests of their own, wielded by their most vocal activists, progressives sorely disappointed by the lack of a public option in the health care bill.

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If hard left candidates run against hard right candidates in the fall, what will moderate and independent voters do? Stay tuned. The answer to this question may determine the future of our republic. However, patience, length of memory and depth of understanding are all characteristics for the possession of which voters as a group are not generally renowned.

From a hope-diminishing morass of opposition party obstructionism and majority party lack of discipline, plus procedural maneuvering aimed at exploiting both, President Obama and Democratic House and Senate leaders rescued the Senate health care bill, and eliminated the worst amendments added to secure 60 votes. As the many benefits of health care reform roll out over the next two election cycles, they must help strengthen the economy first and foremost. Here’s hoping.

Ed Byrne, edbyrne@smartlanduse.com

I didn’t want to buy a gas guzzling, overpriced Hummer of a health care bill. I preferred keeping our old model and doing a tune-up. But Congress and the President didn’t allow me the choice. They said they knew what was best and rejected my input. Like a Hummer, the new healthcare plan squanders money and wastes energy.

Worse yet, it is tainted with the government label, a brand name known to bog down everything it touches in red tape. The bureaucracy that comes with this Hummer requires 16,500 new IRS agents to guarantee that taxpayers don’t stiff the government, according to Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee. Even then, our nation will likely have to borrow billions from other countries as well as our children. If we don’t feel guilty about this, we’ve lost touch with reality.

The truth is that a cheaper tune-up was all that was needed. It should have included no denial for pre-existing conditions, no caps on treatment, and no dropping of patients who become sick. The increases in cost incurred by these measures could have been balanced out by decreasing costs due to preventative care for obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and vascular disease.

Let’s get this straight, 16,500 new IRS agents and no new physicians? What’s wrong with this picture? Can this Hummer of a healthcare bill be returned?

Cinda Kochen cinda.kochen@yahoo.com

Many Americans are realizing that we actually send representatives to Washington to do good work and achieve quality results for the country. Only the most cynical self-defeatists among us believe that our government is so bad that we are better off if nothing gets done; that only market forces and individual self-interest should decide the fate of our citizens. It is that fringe minority that the Republicans have decided to hang their future upon, and I predict they will be punished once again in November for their craven and corrupt approach to “governing.”

President Obama, and an overwhelming majority of Congressional Democrats, attacked a nearly intractable problem where many previous administrations have failed. Though the health care bill is not perfect, it marks a fundamental shift towards protecting the basic needs of the populace. Not one Republican can claim any credit for this achievement. Not one.

Within hours of the bill’s passage, while Republicans continue to engage in procedural obstructionism, we have seen Obama and the energized Democrats begin to work on further progress in areas such as jobs, education, immigration reform, banking regulations, and international relations.

I urge Democrats to use their momentum to continue moving us toward a sane and prosperous future for all citizens. And I urge voters to keep Republicans in their minority status as long as they continue to engage in acts that are destructive to our country.

Dave Ensign dwensign@comcast.net

ObamaCare is a scam. It further empowers politicians to dictate how you seek medical care and support charities. Politicians should protect, rather than violate, your right to make these choices. The bill is not reform. Rather, it spreads a disease that masquerades as its own cure: authoritarian politically controlled medicine. The alleged “right” to health care gives this phony reform a moral facade. In practice, the “right” to health care means government decides when it’s “right” for you to get it.

More fundamentally, health care is not a right. Rights are freedoms to act, not entitlements to what others produce. Say you break your arm and cannot afford treatment. It’s admirable for doctors to voluntarily donate their time or for charities to help you pay.

A government-fabricated “right” to health care is compulsory charity, which violates actual rights. Government would either force doctors to mend your arm, or force others to pay. ObamaCare’s compulsory charity includes explicit taxes and taxes hidden in legislation that inflates insurance premiums.

We need authentic reform. Political controls have wedged insurers between patients and doctors, and employers between patients and insurers. Legislation shields insurers from competition and outlaws affordable insurance. Patients are rarely the paying customer, so no one has incentive to please them.

ObamaCare exacerbates these problems by expanding Massachusetts’ phony reform nationally. Expect similar outcomes as its controls pile on: higher insurance premiums and poor access to doctors. New taxes will also stifle medical innovation and economic growth.

Brian T. Schwartz bschwartz17+eab@gmail.com

The passing of this legislation was incredibly contentious. It further polarized both political parties and received zero Republican support. Worse, according to a CNN poll, 59 percent of citizens opposed it — before the actual vote. Clearly, Pelosi, Reid, and Obama had to cajole and beg many on-the-fence House Dems for their vote (unlike Social Security and Medicare decades earlier, which had significant bipartisan backing). Getting this bill through Congress and on the president’s desk was an ugly, nasty affair that dragged on far too long.

What now? Let’s see if this groundbreaking law delivers the promised benefits. And let’s pray the costs haven’t been wildly underestimated, as conservatives forewarn.

Unfortunately, half a decade will pass before we have any realistic insight into whether this reform will actually rein in costs while providing coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans. Some say Democrats savaged the Constitution to get this bill passed; others salute its promoters as saviors of our health care system. Time will tell who turns out to be the heroes —and who the goats. I sense that Democratic lawmakers fudged the numbers to make the bill look fiscally responsible, and that we will pay dearly for this new entitlement.

If we detect that this law isn’t working, let’s swiftly make refinements and possibly “repeal and replace” it. Regardless, we should immediately tweak it to give individuals an incentive to shop around for insurance and doctors. Competition among providers is just the remedy we need to make medical care more affordable for all.

Jimmy Calano, jimmycalano@yahoo.com

What makes a program successful? Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi compared the Obamacare bill to the “successful” Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security programs. I suspect that she deems them successful because they help so many people. Unfortunately, none of the programs are “sustainable” in the sense that they are all on the verge of bankruptcy.

As an analogy, think about the opening of a new restaurant that serves fantastic food and has clients standing in line every night. For several months everyone is writing about how successful the restaurant appears. Shortly thereafter the restaurant closes. Was the restaurant “successful?” I think not. Without both great food and financial sustainability, the restaurant isn’t successful.

This is the status of each of the large government social programs as well as the new health care bill. None of them are sustainable. The actual costs of Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security are millions of dollars higher than the original estimates. Congress has a history of underestimating the costs of programs. Many commentators have determined that the entire Congressional Budget Office analysis of Obamacare is flawed because it relies upon future reimbursement cuts in Medicare/Medicaid similar to those that Congress just recently avoided again in 2010.

A successful health care bill would have separated employment from health insurance, provided complete portability, allowed the purchase of insurance across state lines, increased the number of doctors and nurses and allowed drugs to be brought to market more quickly. Unfortunately, Congress has approved another “successful” program rather than sensible market improvements.

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